Throw Down With Mother Nature

Now that summer's here, I thought I would share with you my love of nature. There's so many natural wonders to name, but for the sake of time I've narrowed them down to only three of my ABSOLUTE favorites:
1-Ants who want to be my roommates: Look, you might as well know now ants, if you come inquiring about a lease, I WILL kill you. I have a thing about killing roommates who steal my food and crawl over my things. I couldn't kill difficult roommates up at Ricks because of the whole honor code, but it's the real world now ants and you are so dead. Oh, and the toddler who feeds you every meal? Well, she will still feed you because she can't seem to help dropping a truck load of crumbs under her chair, but she will probably kill you anyway too when she picks you up and loves you a little too hard. Either way, get your affairs in order at the anthill...NOW.
2-Weeds: Sure, the snow on the ground six months or more out of the year does get old, I admit it. But at least it provides a nice white, generally gray covering that hides the green disease the engulfs the yard. So bring me your tired...husband, your poor...man's weed killer, your huddled...kids blowing dandelion seeds faster than you can possibly remove them, and you've joined the yard maintenance game that the Benjamin bunch loses each and every year. Oh, we've won a few battles, but have yet to even show up to the war. And there's a little Benedict Arnold of the ground covering fight who thinks the morning glory in the lawn is pwetty. Crap, now it's only 3 to 17 billion and 1...traitorous toddler.
3-Snails: Ok, I admit here is a creature I feel sorry for. They are painfully slow, their shell provides an inadequate protection, and they are in need of some serious personal hygeine tips as they trail this embarrassing ooze wherever they go. But when I open the door and they are on my porch, the steps, the garage door, the kids' playthings, and are eating my garden, I have to think that they are getting the last laugh. And they multiply; the term breeding like rabbits seriously underestimated the power of two willing, albeit slow slime balls. Are they male? Are they female? Who cares. Where there were 2 yesterday, there are 73 today and I personally can't squish them, pour salt on them (barbaric I will never do this EVER), or drown them. Wait! My husband, giver that he is, has found the solution. He will drown them, but before you cry in outrage know this; they will go down happy.
Apparently, he tells me that they really love a good brewsky and will throw themselves into the alcohol and drink themselves into oblivion. Who knew that snails were just waiting around hoping for the next kegger.

Party at my house...

Sitting On A Rock Will Get You Noticed

I have been away for a week at a writing conference. It will take me a while to fully process the experience. There are layers that I must peel away like an onion and that will make my eyes sting as I prepare to slice through them. The experience changed me, as I needed to be changed.

On Thursday I met with the most distinguished man of the literary world that I will ever meet. It was as if I knelt at his feet; my offering of twenty pages stained with innocent ink, and hope littered in its white spaces. The chair he offered me was broken; a single cheek hung precariously off the one safe edge, my dignity struggled on the other.

He gazed at me through midnight transition lenses. Were his eyes making the glass darker or were his glasses turning his almond orbs into tiny spotlights revealing my absolute ineptness? Inept: That was the word he used to describe my story; or was it my writing, perhaps it was the author of it. He spoke to me as if it pained him; like the tin man grinding his un-oiled jaw, he was able to squeak only, “Drivel, folksy, backwoods.”

I felt the tears as they crawled up my organs, gaining momentum from all the emotional exercise I give them. I set my own jaw, knowing in this one heart beat of my life that I would not let the king of self-importance see my spirit leaking. I asked him a couple of questions: What did he think of the brother’s voice? He paused and for a split second his jelly-donut face oozed a cream-filled doubt. I asked him about my main character’s age and muteness, and he himself suddenly could not speak. If I could have moved my wooden hand, I would have slapped my forehead: He had not read beyond the first page-and-a-half.

He admitted it and told me he thought there was no market for my story and that he wasn’t sure anyone would understand it anyway. To make up for this slight, he picked apart my lack of a comma and a poor word choice until I understood my proper place once more: I was nobody. I understood it very well and a drawer shut in my mind. My story was placed inside and covered with a linen cloth.

I stood up when I had had enough; oh, and when he told me that he would only answer any questions that were related to what he had just discussed with me. There were none…only the barbed ones slicing through the sinew of my soul. I offered him my hand and thanked him for his ten minutes of time; twenty minutes less than we had set aside.

I left him in his unbroken chair.

My feet carried me away in a strange town. The tears marched their armies down my face until my lack of tissue was a problem. The bathroom was beside where he still sat. I unabashedly used my arm; it was a very ‘backwoods’ thing for me to do, maybe even a little ‘folksy.’ I decided not to tread too far from the afternoon session of the conference. My two sweet friends were saving me a seat inside; a seat I wasn’t planning to fill.

I chose a rather secluded bench and sat down, resting my aching pride. An elderly couple approached me and asked if they could have the seat. I obliged and stood outside the building my friends were in, until a camera man who was filming the conference set up his tripod right where I was standing. I found an unassuming rock and I did the only thing I knew: I wrote furiously in my notebook. I looked up and the camera was facing me.

I flinched. “Oh, am I in your way, AGAIN?”

The camera guy smiled, “Oh no. I’ve actually been filming you, if that’s okay. You are the epitome of what this conference is about.”

What irony. The conference, which hires the man, who breaks my heart, which causes me to write my sorrow, which prompts a person to be inspired, and include my moment in said conference’s video.

I opened that drawer in my head and took the story back out again, and I placed his words inside that drawer instead. And now I keep going; grateful for the experience, hungry to prove myself. And in my liberal use of the movie Pretty Woman:

Big Shot Editor: Yes, can I help you mere peasant person?
Rachel: I was here a few years back, you wouldn't read my story.
Big Shot Editor: Well, I never...
Rachel: Your literary journal prides itself on finding the best stories?
Big Shot Editor: Of course.
Rachel: Big mistake. Big. Huge. I have to go write now.

In Which I Ramble...

A sad fact: Since I’ve stopped eating sugar, I’ve been less funny…Apparently, my humor had everything to do with high fructose corn syrup. The whole grain lifestyle has crimped my ability to come up with a good one liner. Oh, I still try, but my delivery falls flatter than a plain cardboard rice cake. I coped with my life through food…I then transferred over to the internet…things were getting crazy, I could zone out and let it all go in front of the little glowing box of other people’s wonderful lives. I could discuss reading books, without reading all that many. I could read about writing and write about writing and not really write. In fact, I could talk about living, without really living.

I realized today, that I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t have anything to add to the conversation. Now I’m not depressed and the fact that I have been without a car for the last few weeks could be narrowing my perception of the world, but the truth is I need a change. My short story is finally finished. I am preparing to spend a week away with my fabulous writing buds to bask in the writers’ life. The hubby informed me when we were just throwing the idea of me getting away for awhile, that I HAD to take this opportunity. I know it won’t be easy for him, but he hasn’t blinked.

You see, his eyes have been wide open before. I watched our wedding video the other day with Ceci. I even wore my veil for her if you want to know the truth. She loved the whole thing (except for the part where it was time to feed each other cake and I didn’t even aim for his mouth…who knew that frosting affected contact lenses…seriously?) Well, the violence of it frightened her and then his rebuttal right into my eyes and the licking of the frosting off the faces (yes, an elderly woman left our reception in disgust.) And you know what??? We loved every minute of that moment, because that is so US.

If I could have glimpsed into the future and seen the nights spent in agony, the hospital visits, the surgeries, the deafening silence of fear, the job losses, the food appearing at our doorways, the collapsing upon the ground in seeming defeat, the miracles, the angels, the babies that we were overwhelmed to be the parents of, the glimpses of eternity in the mundane moments, the whisperings of so much more, the beauty that comes from suffering, the chipping away of that couple who had the world by the hands and was dancing with it and each other and who the world tries to crush, but we are still dancing…together.

Still not funny, I know…but it’s in there, even if the frosting has long left my tear ducts.

A Letter To My Children

Cup cakes are in the oven and Conner and CC are playing. Conner took the blanket from his sister; my feisty, headstrong, fiery daughter is shouting, “I don’t want it! I don’t want it!” Oh CC, you will cry that all throughout your life. There is much we don’t want. Much that hurts, much that we wish could be gone, much that causes us to want to stop and weep and not take that step forward…that step into the dark…off the precipice…into the unknown.

I promise you my sweet son and daughter, that you will never be left comfortless, that you are never alone in this life. Your Savior, your Lord, your King will take you by the hand and guide you through every.single.day. You must ask, you must seek, you must be strong, for the winds will howl and pain and sorrow come to all. In this life however, you will also experience profound joy and there is only ONE source…only HE.

Speak

If will alone was a super power, I'd be a comic book hero.

I visualized myself winning a writing competition; the first one I've ever entered. I was notified that I was a finalist and didn't exhale it seemed for a good five minutes. I could feel my character breathing out her history. I thought my story had legs and could run marathons. It must have sauntered casually to that finish line however, and others crossed it first, and second, and third...

My left hand is the conduit through with communication must steadily flow and somehow the space between my brain and said hand loses something in the translation, because I can very rarely SPEAK effectively. I'm married to a National debate champion and the mother to two offspring who talk circles around me, straight from the womb.

And yet, with paper and pen I'm alive and I can pretend...I can pretend I won. That I won the contest and that I walked up on a stage. That there was a microphone so imposing that it made me cross my bleary eyes which blocked the courteous clip clapping of the crowd that came to hear me read my words, my soul. That my children could see their mother achieve something, anything so that they too may know that they can hurdle their Everest.

I picture myself reading, nervous, tremulous diction and damp underarms, but lit up like Christmas morning. My best clothes, straightened hair, unshed tears, a hidden heart resurrected; crazy glued together and soaring into another time...another place...another life.

I WILL do what I dream to do because there is no choice. I was born to speak, though one has to read in order to hear what I'm really needing, yearning, crying to tell them. Someday I will succeed...and until then my left hand will not stop dog paddling through this ocean of words I need to flood my empty pages with.

Because I have a story to tell.

Let Her Eat Cake

A daily conversation:


7:30 AM "What's for dinner?"


"It's breakfast time now CC."


8 AM "I want cake!"


"No CC, we can't have cake right now. How about cereal?"


"NO! I want ketchup and a 'poon."


9 AM (after a full breakfast of banana, strawberries, blueberries and Kix)

"What's for dinner?"


"We just ate CC!"


10AM "I want a nack!" (usually crackers)


11AM more crackers...


noon "What's for dinner?" (include a pb&j, apple pieces, string cheese and anything else she can think of)

RIGHT AFTER THIS..."I want a nack!"

"AHHH no it's naptime now"

3,4,5pm more of the same (in which she snacks on raisins, yogurt, fruit snacks, raviolis, anything I can think of and yes, even candy if I'm desperate...which I usually am)

5pm dinner time

6&7PM "I want dinner!!" followed by a glass of milk and a final snack and bedtime...



So I ask you? Is it boredom, is it an emotional attachment to food at age 2? Is it a toddler's cries for her mother's attention through food, is it a tapeworm, or does she simply like to see the nervous twitch I've developed whenever I hear the words "dinner" or "nack" in which I close my eyes while holding my head and weeping followed by a gnashing of teeth??????



But, I digress from the real reason for this post:


Friday was my baby's birthday. The girl with the flash and sparkle, the Himalayan personality. Who gets the joke, who will say "now that's funny!" after SHE says something. Who loves adventure, who sings herself to sleep and awake, and sings herself into the spotlight. Who has a lioness temper with a dollop of grizzly bear, and who will cry at the very sight of human suffering of any kind. Whose eyes illuminate the canvas of her soul...and she's a masterpiece.


I adore you, Cecilia.

Peter Pan Am I

I never wanted to grow up.

I was not the child who yearned to be a teenager or the teenager who dreamed of adulthood. I was the child who thought I would always be a child. The teenager who didn’t know WHAT had happened to me and missed childhood. The adult who didn’t understand how 21 turned into 22 so quickly. I will be the 80 year old who calls my friends and says “Hey girls.”

Now just for the record, I LOVE being a wife and mother. I just still find it hard to believe that I am THE wife and mother. I still look in the mirror and can’t fathom who this grown up is staring back at me.

I relate extremely well to children and yes, even teenagers too (though sometimes I am terrified :) I guess it makes sense if I still think I’m one of them. No, it’s not like I’m trying to relive the “glory days” of high school. Far from it. I moved around so much growing up, I wonder if I just scattered the ashes of my childhood onto too many places. Every new move forced me to grow up just a little faster. New girl better fit in quickly if she wants to survive. Be one of us, be who we want you to be or you’ll be all alone. Part of me had to perish with every step into every new school. I didn’t have the sense of self to save my drowning soul.

The funny thing is, all the reinventing helped me to get along with almost anyone wherever I am. It has served me well and I’m grateful for how my experiences stretched me. I tell you this, because Monday is my birthday…And I feel 21.

I’m okay with that.